The Irish Free State, established under the terms of the treaty with the same constitutional status as Canada and the other dominions in the British Commonwealth, came into existence on Dec. 6, 1922. The Anglo-Irish Treaty (Article 12) also stated that Northern Ireland could opt out of the Irish Free State and provided for a commission to establish a permanent frontier. Despite Northern Ireland’s reluctance, the Boundary Commission was set up and sat in secret session during 1924–25. But when it recommended only minor changes, which all three governments rejected as less satisfactory than maintaining the status quo, the tripartite intergovernmental agreement of Dec. 3, 1925, revoked the commission’s powers and maintained the existing boundary of Northern Ireland.

The treaty triggered bitter dissension in Sinn Féin, and some of its terms—notably the prescribed oath of allegiance to the British crown—were so repugnant to many republicans, led by de Valera, that the Dáil ratified the treaty on Jan. 7, 1922, by only seven votes: 64 to 57. De Valera’s resignation as president signaled his refusal to accept that vote as a final verdict and enhanced the respectability of opposition to the treaty despite its endorsement in an election on June 16, 1922. The IRA also split, with a majority of its members (known as the Irregulars) opposed to the treaty. There followed a bitter civil war that cost almost 1,000 lives. The most famous casualty was Michael Collins, the charismatic guerrilla leader and chairman of the 1922 Provisional Government (set up to implement the treaty), who was killed in an ambush in Cork on Aug. 22, 1922. He was succeeded by the more prosaic William T. Cosgrave, who became the first head of government (“president of the Executive Council”) of the Irish Free State. The victory of Cosgrave’s government in the civil war was never in doubt: its electoral majority, the Catholic hierarchy’s condemnation of the Irregulars, and such draconian measures as internment without trial and the introduction of the death penalty for possession of arms (77 republicans were executed), as well as factionalism within their own ranks, doomed the Irregulars to defeat, although they did not suspend military operations until April 27, 1923.

In the election of August 1923, Cosgrave’s party, Cumann na nGaedheal (“Party of the Irish”), won 63 seats, as opposed to 44 for de Valera’s Sinn Féin party; however, Sinn Féin abdicated its role as main opposition party when its elected members refused to sit in the new Dáil. Sinn Féin’s absence enhanced the authority of Cosgrave’s government and enabled the speedy enactment of the mass of legislation necessary to set the infant state on firm foundations.

The cost of postwar reconstruction was immense. In 1923–24, 30 percent of all national expenditure went toward defense and another 7 percent was allocated to compensation for property losses and personal injuries. Yet despite such economic difficulties, the government pursued an efficient farming policy and carried through important hydroelectric projects. Administration was increasingly centralized; an efficient civil service based on the British model and copper-fastened against corruption was established; and Kevin O’Higgins, as minister for justice, carried through many judicial reforms.

In the general election of June 1927, Cosgrave’s support in the Dáil was further reduced, but he nevertheless formed a new ministry, in which O’Higgins became vice president of the Executive Council. O’Higgins’s assassination by maverick republicans on July 10 suddenly revived old feuds. Cosgrave passed a stringent Public Safety Act and introduced legislation requiring that all candidates for the Dáil declare their willingness, if elected, to take the oath of allegiance. De Valera then led his new party, Fianna Fáil (“Soldiers of Ireland”), into the Dáil and signed the declaration required under the oath of allegiance, which he now claimed was “merely an empty political formula” that did not involve its signatories in “obligations of loyalty to the English Crown.”

De Valera’s commitment to constitutional politics and Fianna Fáil’s assumption of the role of parliamentary opposition posed insuperable electoral problems for Cumann na nGaedheal. The civil war split permanently shaped party politics in independent Ireland. It ensured that the British connection, as embodied in the treaty, replaced the Act of Union as the great divide: pro-treaty against antitreaty replaced unionist versus nationalist as the hallmarks of political commitment. Although Collins had described the treaty merely as a “stepping stone,” a means to the end of greater independence, the blood spilled in the civil war locked his successors in Cumann na nGaedheal (which joined with two lesser parties—the Centre Party and the Blue Shirts—to form Fine Gael in 1933) into seeing the treaty as an end in itself and denied them the access enjoyed by Fianna Fáil to the reservoir of anti-British sentiment that remained the most potent force in Irish nationalist politics. The problems of Cosgrave’s last administration were compounded by the Great Depression (triggered by the U.S. stock market crash of 1929), and the resulting unemployment and general discontent with the government led to its defeat in February 1932. Fianna Fáil won enough seats for de Valera, with Labour Party support, to be able to form a new government.

De Valera’s governments (1932–48) and the quest for sovereignty

De Valera’s primary purpose was to expunge those elements of the treaty he thought restrictive of Irish independence. His obsession with British-Irish relations was reflected in his holding the ministerial portfolio for external affairs simultaneously with the presidency of the Executive Council. He moved first to abolish the oath of allegiance, although the Senate’s opposition delayed the enactment of the necessary legislation until May 1933. His government also degraded the office of Britain’s governor-general in Ireland by systematically humiliating its incumbent, James McNeill; exploiting the constitutional doctrine that the British sovereign must act on ministerial advice, de Valera counseled the dismissal of McNeil (which occurred in November 1932) and forced his replacement by a subservient supporter. He also stopped the transfer to the British treasury of the land annuities, repayments of the loans advanced to Irish tenant farmers to buy their land under the Land Acts of 1891–1909. In July 1932 the British imposed import duties on most Irish exports to the United Kingdom to recoup their losses, and the Irish retaliated in kind. Although the British were financial beneficiaries in the “economic war,” Fianna Fáil was the political beneficiary because it cloaked its protectionist policies in patriotic rhetoric and blamed Britain for the deepening recession; it duly won an overall majority in the snap election called by de Valera in January 1933.

In December 1936 de Valera seized on the abdication of Edward VIII to enact two bills: the first deleted all mention of the king and the governor-general from the 1922 constitution; the second, the External Relations Act, gave effect to the abdication and recognized the crown only for the purposes of diplomatic representation. De Valera’s new constitution, ratified by referendum, came into effect on Dec. 29, 1937, and made “Ireland”—the new name of the state (“Éire” in Irish, which was now proclaimed the first official language)—an independent republic associated with the British Commonwealth only as matter of external policy. The head of state was henceforth a president elected by popular vote to a seven-year term, and the head of government was henceforth known as the “taoiseach.” De Valera’s achievement was extraordinary: acting unilaterally, he had rewritten the constitutional relationship with Britain in less than six years. But he had to negotiate with British Prime Minster Neville Chamberlain’s government to achieve his remaining objective: the transfer of three naval bases occupied by the British under a defense annex to the treaty. This he achieved with the defense agreement of April 25, 1938, which was coupled with a finance agreement (settling the land annuities dispute) and a trade agreement (softening the tariff war). The defense agreement completed the process of establishing Irish sovereignty and made possible Ireland’s neutrality in a European war, an avowed republican aspiration since the 1921 treaty negotiations.

At the outbreak of World War II, de Valera renewed his statement, made in 1938, that Ireland would not become a base for attacks on Great Britain. Under the Emergency Powers Act of 1939, hundreds of IRA members were interned without trial, and six were executed between 1940 and 1944. Ostensibly, de Valera’s government, reelected in 1943 and 1944, remained strictly neutral, despite pressure from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, German air raids on Dublin in 1941, and, after the United States entered the war in December 1941, pressure from U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt. But, secretly, the Irish authorities provided significant intelligence and other assistance to the Allies because de Valera realized that a German victory would threaten that hard-won independence of which Irish neutrality was the ultimate expression.

The Republic of Ireland

In the general election of 1948, Fianna Fáil failed to gain a majority, winning only 68 of the 147 seats in the Dáil, but de Valera refused to enter a coalition. John A. Costello emerged as the leader of an interparty government led by his own party, Fine Gael. Costello introduced the Republic of Ireland Act, which repealed the External Relations Act of 1936 and ended the fiction of Commonwealth membership. The act took effect in April 1949, and the British government retaliated with legislation recognizing the new status of Ireland but guaranteeing the constitutional status of Northern Ireland and the territorial integrity of Northern Ireland as subject to the consent of the parliament of Northern Ireland. Although partition remained a festering sore that erupted 20 years later, the Republic of Ireland Act dissolved the obsession with the British connection. Henceforth relations between Dublin and London were conducted on the basis of absolute equality between sovereign governments, and domestic politics, as elsewhere in western Europe, increasingly became the politics of economics.

The 1950s were a time of economic stagnation (with emigration running at levels unprecedented since the 1880s) and of political flux. There were changes of government after the elections of 1951, 1954, and 1957, when Fianna Fáil returned to power for what proved to be another 16 years. In 1959 a blind and aging de Valera was elected president, and he remained in that office until 1973. His successor as taoiseach (1959–66) was Seán Lemass—minister for industry and commerce (1932–39, 1941–48, 1951–54, 1957–59), as well as minister for supplies during World War II—whose predominant interest had always been economics.

Developments since 1959

Economic and political developments

Economic Development, a plan for national regeneration, had been published in 1958 under the name of T.K. Whitaker, an exceptional civil servant and then secretary of the Department of Finance. Lemass and Whitaker implemented the First Programme for Economic Expansion (1958–63), under which the principle of protection was abandoned and foreign investment encouraged, while a targeted growth rate of 2 percent resulted in 4 percent actual growth. This prosperity brought profound social and cultural changes to what had been one of the poorest countries in Europe. Emigration substantially declined; access to education broadened; consumer spending increased and holidaying abroad became commonplace; Catholic social teaching was challenged; and the advent of an Irish television service eroded traditional values and led to a relaxation of censorship of books and films. In 1961 Ireland applied for membership of the European Economic Community (EEC; later the European Community [EC], embedded in the European Union [EU]). The application lapsed when the French vetoed Britain’s entry; the predominance of the British market for Irish producers was such that it made no sense for Ireland to join the EEC if Britain was excluded. Nevertheless, Lemass’s unequivocal commitment to Europe (for which he won the support of the main opposition party, Fine Gael) proved his enduring legacy. The Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement of 1965 dismantled more tariff barriers, and although Ireland, like Britain, did not join the EEC until Jan. 1, 1973, the delay eased the impact of transition. Engagement in Europe transformed Ireland socially as well as economically. Production subsidies and higher prices under the EEC’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) benefitted Irish farmers; Irish industry gained from access to wider markets; and European social and regional programs revolutionized the country’s infrastructure. Reduced dependence on British markets led in 1979 to Ireland’s joining the European Monetary System despite Britain’s staying outside it; this severance of the more than 150-year link with sterling was affirmed in 2002 when Ireland, unlike Britain, joined the euro zone (the countries that share the euro as their currency). In May 1987 a constitutional referendum ratified the Single European Act and confirmed Ireland’s participation in the EEC. The act called for the harmonization of social and fiscal measures taken within the EEC and was a forerunner of the 1991 Maastricht Treaty (Treaty on European Union), which paved the way for the establishment of economic and monetary union and was approved by a large majority of Irish voters in a referendum. Ireland became an unexpected obstacle to further European integration, however, when the Lisbon Treaty—an agreement aimed at streamlining the EU’s processes and giving it a higher international profile—was rejected in a referendum in June 2008; that verdict, however, was reversed in a second referendum on Oct. 2, 2009.

It was also in 1973 that the Fianna Fáil government of Jack Lynch (taoiseach since 1966) was defeated by a Fine Gael–Labour coalition led by Liam Cosgrave. The worldwide oil crisis and recession of 1974–75 forced the imposition of deflationary economic policies, a wealth tax, and attempts to tax farmers’ incomes. Lynch returned to power in 1977 when Fianna Fáil proposed an ambitious economic policy based on tax cuts and the creation of new enterprises through foreign borrowing. Despite a brief boom, serious economic problems had become evident by 1980. These included declining agricultural prices, rising prices for imported oil, only a small increase in output, and a rapidly growing population, nearly half of which was under age 25. Moreover, foreign borrowing increased, and unemployment and inflation rose steeply. Civil strife in Northern Ireland, leading to a revival of the IRA, exposed dissensions within Fianna Fáil and culminated in Lynch’s sensational sacking of Charles Haughey and Neal Blaney from his government in May 1970 for allegedly organizing the illegal importation of arms for the IRA. But, even when the charges against Blaney were dropped and Haughey was acquitted, the tensions continued to corrode Lynch’s authority.

The early 1980s were politically volatile. Although no clear majority emerged in the election of 1981, Garret FitzGerald became taoiseach in a Fine Gael–Labour coalition, ousting Haughey, who had succeeded Lynch as Fianna Fáil leader in 1979. The rivalry between the charismatic FitzGerald (a Francophile, social democrat, academic, economist, and proponent of conciliation with Northern Ireland) and the no-less-charismatic Haughey (an Anglophobic, talented, high-living, and opportunistic pragmatist whose reputation was ultimately destroyed by revelations of his corruption and massive indebtedness to wealthy businessmen and to Ireland’s largest bank) dominated the politics of the 1980s. The major campaign issues of the era were economic policy, including the imposition of a wealth tax, and the removal of a constitutional ban on divorce. The budget of the coalition government was defeated in January 1982, and a general election in February returned Fianna Fáil and Haughey to power. The new government’s tenure was short and uneasy. In the face of a large budget deficit, a program of severe public spending cuts was introduced. The government was defeated on a no-confidence vote in November, and another general election—the third in 18 months—followed. This time a Fine Gael–Labour coalition under the leadership of FitzGerald secured a working majority.

By the mid-1980s the economy was showing signs of improvement. Inflation was at its lowest level in nearly two decades, helped by lower oil prices. However, the budget deficit and high unemployment continued to pose problems. Emigration, a barometer of Irish economic ill health, again began to increase in the mid-1980s. The prolonged recession had once again brought to the surface doubts and anxieties about the future of the Irish state and its real independence.

The economic crises of the 1970s and ’80s were mirrored by political upheavals. In February 1987 Fianna Fáil returned to power under Haughey but without an overall majority; FitzGerald resigned as leader of Fine Gael and was succeeded by Alan Dukes. The new Progressive Democrat party (PD), formed in December 1985 largely from Fianna Fáil dissidents under the leadership of Desmond O’Malley, made a strong showing. Following a decision in November 1986 to abandon its policy of refusing to contest Dáil elections, Sinn Féin, the political wing of the Provisional IRA (which had split from the old IRA over the use of force in Northern Ireland), stood on a socialist and pro-IRA platform but failed to win a seat.

In 1989 Haughey smashed the mold of Fianna Fáil’s refusal to participate in interparty governments when he formed a coalition with the Progressive Democrats—the first of a series of coalitions that continuously governed Ireland for the next 20 years—and the new government embarked on a program of comprehensive public spending cuts. The austerity measures were successful, and by the early 1990s the country’s economic position had improved considerably. Inflation was low; budget deficits were reduced; and the annual growth rate was averaging more than 5 percent. The economy continued to boom throughout the late 1990s, fueled by the high-technology sector, with unemployment dropping to historically low levels.

In 1990 Mary Robinson became the republic’s first woman president. The election of a candidate with socialist and feminist sympathies was regarded as a watershed in Irish political life, reflecting the changes taking place in Irish society. Haughey was ousted in 1992 as leader of Fianna Fáil and as taoiseach by Albert Reynolds. A Fianna Fáil–Labour coalition came to power after the 1992 general election but collapsed in 1994. Another coalition, consisting of members of the Fine Gael, Labour, and Democratic Left parties, then took office, with Fine Gael leader John Bruton as taoiseach. The Bruton government lasted until the general election of June 1997, after which Fianna Fáil formed a new coalition with party leader Bertie Ahern as taoiseach. In October Mary McAleese was elected president, the first Irish president from Northern Ireland (she was reelected in 2004). In 2002 Fianna Fáil formed yet another coalition government with the Progressive Democrats, headed again by Ahern. Although dogged by criticism through much of his tenure, Ahern capitalized on his personal popularity to lead Fianna Fáil to another election victory in 2007, and he formed yet another coalition government. In May 2008, however, in response to growing criticism of alleged past financial improprieties, Ahern resigned as taoiseach.

His successor, Brian Cowen, was pitched headlong into Ireland’s worst economic crisis since Fianna Fáil first came to power in 1932. Although this was partly due to the vulnerability of a small economy to the impact of the global financial crisis then afflicting much of the world, it was compounded by overexpenditure on public service pay and by the necessity to establish a National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) to bail out the insolvent Irish banks, which had persisted in making grotesquely extravagant and imprudent loans to property developers. The burden of rescuing the banks dramatically escalated the national deficit. So strained were Ireland’s resources that in November 2010—even after proposing income tax hikes and reductions in services—the government was compelled to accept a bailout of more than $100 million from the EU, the International Monetary Fund, and countries offering bilateral aid. In response to these developments, the Green Party, the junior partner in the ruling coalition with Fianna Fáil, called for early elections in January 2011. The unpopularity of the austerity measures required to meet the conditions of the loan, along with rumours of ethical impropriety, led to a challenge of Cowen’s leadership of Fianna Fáil in mid-January 2011. Although he survived the leadership vote, in a dizzying sequence of events that followed, Cowen called for an election to be held on March 11, then resigned as Fianna Fáil’s leader, but remained on as a caretaker taoiseach, only to witness the withdrawal of the Green Party from the ruling coalition, with the likely consequence of an even earlier election.

Social and religious changes

The close relationship between the Irish republic and the Roman Catholic Church was highlighted by the visit of Pope John Paul II to Ireland in 1979, the first visit there by a reigning pontiff. But the fraying of that relationship, signaled in the 1960s and 1970s by a collapse in vocations to the priesthood and a decline in attendance at mass, continued in the 1980s and 1990s. The clause in the 1937 constitution acknowledging the special position of the Roman Catholic Church had been removed in 1972, although in 1983 the conservative resistance of Catholic pressure groups resulted in a referendum on a draft constitutional amendment reinforcing the republic’s existing ban on abortion. After a divisive campaign, with barely a majority of the electorate voting in the referendum, voters approved the amendment.

In 1985 the church vainly opposed the government’s liberalization of legislation concerning contraception. Church-state relations were tested again the following year when a referendum to remove the constitutional ban against divorce was defeated. A second referendum on abortion, which strengthened the existing antiabortion law but enabled women to travel overseas to obtain an abortion, was approved in 1992. Another referendum to lift the ban on divorce was held in 1995 and was passed by only a small majority; it went into effect in 1997. In 1992 the church was rocked by the first of a series of scandals when the bishop of Galway, Eamon Casey, resigned after it was discovered that he was the father of a teenage son. In 1995 controversy over the extradition to Northern Ireland of a pedophile priest, Brendan Smyth, brought down the Irish government. In 1999 the government announced the establishment of a commission to investigate the abuse that had been widespread until the 1970s in industrial and reformatory schools. Similar government commissions of inquiry conducted during the next decade culminated in the publication of the Murphy Report in 2009 (which reached devastating conclusions on the extent of concealment of priestly pedophilia in the Dublin archdiocese), in multiple episcopal resignations, in Pope Benedict XVI’s summoning the Irish hierarchy to Rome, and, on March 20, 2010, in a papal letter apologizing to all victims of Catholic clerical sex abuse and announcing a formal Vatican investigation of Irish dioceses, seminaries, and religious orders affected by the scandal.

Relations with Northern Ireland

In 1957 the Irish government introduced internment without trial in response to an IRA campaign of attacks on British army and customs posts along the border with Northern Ireland that had begun in 1956 and lasted until 1962. An attempt to ease cross-border tensions was made in 1965, when Lemass exchanged visits with Terence O’Neill, Northern Ireland’s prime minister.

The Irish government was increasingly preoccupied by the continuing violence in Northern Ireland that had first erupted in 1969. Lynch’s dismissal of two of his ministers in 1970 following an attempt to import arms for use in Northern Ireland paved the way for a consensual approach, with all major parties increasingly committed to cooperating with the British government in seeking a peaceful resolution. Thus, Lynch’s government supported the British government’s suspension of the Northern Ireland parliament and government and the introduction of direct rule from Westminster in March 1972. In December 1973, after the establishment of a power-sharing executive (composed of nationalists as well as unionists) in Northern Ireland, Liam Cosgrave’s government participated in talks with Edward Heath, prime minister of Britain, and the power-sharing executive, resulting in the Sunningdale Agreement. This accord recognized that Northern Ireland’s relationship with Britain could not be changed without the agreement of a majority of its population, and it provided for the establishment of a Council of Ireland composed of members from both the Dáil and the Northern Ireland assembly. But direct rule was reimposed when that agreement collapsed in May 1974 because of a general strike inspired by unionist opponents of power-sharing.

Although the republic experienced nothing like the scale of the continuing violence in Northern Ireland, there were a number of serious terrorist incidents. On May 17, 1974, three car bombs in Dublin and one in Monaghan caused an eventual death toll of 33 (the largest number killed on any one day since the violence began in 1970). The IRA’s murder of the British ambassador in Dublin in 1976 led to a state of emergency and the unpopular measure of strengthening emergency-powers legislation, and the assassination at his holiday home in Sligo of Earl Louis Mountbatten of Burma (Britain’s last viceroy in India) by the IRA in 1979 further intensified opposition to terrorism.

In 1981 FitzGerald launched a constitutional crusade to make the reunification of Ireland more attractive to Northern Ireland’s Protestants. At the end of the year, the Irish and British governments set up an Anglo-Irish intergovernmental council to discuss matters of common concern, especially security. In 1984 the report of the New Ireland Forum—a discussion group that included representatives of political parties in Ireland and Northern Ireland—set out three possible frameworks for political development in Ireland: a unitary state, a federal state, and joint sovereignty. Fianna Fáil preferred a unitary state, which Fine Gael and Labour regarded as unrealistic; they preferred the federal option. In November 1985 at Hillsborough in Northern Ireland, Ireland and Britain again agreed that any change in the status of Northern Ireland would come about only with the consent of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland, and an intergovernmental conference was established to deal with political, security, and legal relations between the two parts of the island.

Despite Fianna Fáil’s initial criticism of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, the Haughey government worked the agreement. Contacts between the Irish and British governments continued after February 1987 within the formal structure of the intergovernmental conference. Fears that the violence in Northern Ireland would spill into Ireland as a consequence of closer Anglo-Irish cooperation in the wake of the agreement proved unfounded.

In 1993 the Irish and British governments signed a joint peace initiative (the Downing Street Declaration), in which they pledged to seek mutually agreeable political structures in Northern Ireland and between the two islands. In 1994 the IRA declared a cease-fire, and for the next 18 months there was considerable optimism that a new period of political cooperation between north and south had been inaugurated. The cease-fire collapsed in 1996, however, and the IRA resumed its bombing campaign.

In 1998 the taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, played an important role in brokering the Good Friday Agreement (Belfast Agreement), which would create a Northern Ireland Assembly, establish north-south political structures, and amend Ireland’s 1937 constitution by removing from it the de jure claim to Northern Ireland. On May 22, 1998, the agreement was approved by 94 percent of voters in Ireland and by 71 percent in Northern Ireland. With the establishment of the power-sharing assembly, the Irish government continued to remain active in promoting peace and economic development in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Assembly’s assumption of power was halting, however, and was suspended intermittently, largely in response to the failure of the paramilitary forces to fully decommission and disarm. But in May 2007, following another round of new elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly and two years after the IRA’s abandonment of armed struggle, power sharing became a reality in Northern Ireland.

Leaders of Ireland since 1922

The table provides a chronological list of the leaders of Ireland since 1922.